The pizza girl walked tentatively down the pier to the boat. She'd never delivered a pizza to a boat before, and she wasn't entirely sure what the proper etiquette was. On the drive here she'd been hoping that the guy would be waiting for her on deck, but so far she didn't see anyone. She did pass a woman wearing scrubs and hobbling on crutches who was going in the opposite direction. The pizza girl might have asked her where the guy who called in the order was, but the woman (who the pizza girl assumed was a doctor) didn't look in the slightest bit happy. No sense in disturbing her.
Once at the boat, the pizza girl called out: "Mr. O'Malley, I'm here with your pizza!"
The pizza girl waited but there was no response. Well, Mr. O'Malley must be inside and couldn't hear her, she figured. She clambered on board the boat praying that she didn't accidentally lose her grip on the pizza and pitch it into the water. Now that would be embarrassing.
"Mr. O'Malley?" she said again.
Still no answer. She knocked on the door of the cabin.
"Go away," a voice said.
This mystified the pizza girl. Why would a man order a pizza and then refuse it when it finally came? It's not like it had taken long for her to get here. Sometimes people were funny like that. If it took too long to get to them they tried to stiff you on the tip and sometimes even the bill. But the pizza girl didn't work for a chain store that promised delivery within thirty minutes or the thing was free. She'd never encountered someone who completely refused the order, though.
Even though the pizza girl was convinced this guy was a hopeless case and wasn't going to tip her, at least she'd make him pay for the pie. She didn't want to have to eat the cost. She slid open the door to the boat's cabin and stuck her head in. The pizza girl still didn't see anyone. She ventured inside and only once she was a few paces in did she see Mr. O'Malley sitting on the floor in the back of the cabin. He was scrubbing his refrigerator. Weird.
"Mr. O'Malley, I'm really sorry about barging in like this, but I brought your pizza. One large with double cheese. That'll be fifteen dollars," the pizza girl said.
The man looked up and said, "I didn't order a pizza. Get off my boat."
"So you're saying you're not Joseph O'Malley of—" the pizza girl rattled off the "address" of the boat.
Without looking up this time, the man said, "You got the right place but not the right person. I'm not O'Malley. I don't know any O'Malley. Must have been a prank order. I'm really sorry, but this isn't my problem. Go away."
The words "prank order" were like a blow to the pizza girl's stomach. Lately there'd been a rash of them. They were hard to accept on a normal day, but today was not a normal day.